Re: [Bitcoin-development] Linux packaging letter

[Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 8:32 AM, zooko <zooko@zooko.com> wrote:
> This makes it sound like if, for example, Debian were to link bitcoind to the
> system leveldb, and then upgrade the system leveldb to fix a bug that affects
> bitcoind, that this would spell the end of Bitcoin.

Maybe!  A widespread consensus failure causes people to lose money
even absent malice. How much depends on a bunch of details, including
the luck of attackers.

The total ramifications are as much social as they are technical so
it's hard to reason over the outcomes beyond "at a minimum, it's not
good".

A really bad splitting event could results in large amounts of Bitcoin
being stolen through reversals. Obviously the system itself would keep
on ticking once the issue was resolved... but if millions of dollars
at recent prices in coins were stolen,  would people want to keep
using it?

The most dire outcomes are (very?) unlikely, but they're not necessary
to recognize that risk mitigation is important.

It's good to be careful here just to avoid the bad outcomes we are
sure will happen (because we've experienced them before):   Hundreds
of dollars worth of coin income 'lost' per minute to miners on the
losing side of a 50/50 fork, hours long disruption of the lives of
dozens of people in the Bitcoin technical ecosystem (many of whom are
volunteer OSS developers), hours of disruption (no payments processed)
to Bitcoin users and businesses.  These are the best case outcomes in
a substantial non-transient hard forking event.

I think one of the challenges in talking about this stuff is correctly
framing these risks.  Bitcoin is a novel technology that lacks a lot
of the recourse that other systems have— No Bitcoin central bank to
create a bit of inflation to paper over a glitch,  eliminating those
kinds of centralized "fixes" is much of the point, after all—  so with
the idea of starry eyed people taking out second mortgages on their
kids kidneys to buy up coin clearly in my mind I do think it's
important to be clear about the full range of risk:  It's _possible_
that due to some amazing sequences of technical screwups that by next
week most everyone could consider Bitcoin worthless. I think it's
important to be frank about those risks.  ... but it's also not good
to be chicken little, calling doom on anyone who wants to change the
color of the GUI. :P   Navigating it is hard, and generally I'd prefer
that if there is any misunderstanding people overestimate the risks a
little— so long as things stay in the realm of the possible— rather
than underestimate them.